Lancer Concept #1 — Petrus

Super Short Summary — Petrus is a stone-themed lancer from the Wastes. He is a firepower that relies on consistent but relatively indirect / passive sources of damage, somewhat like Grey or Gremolitions. His kit revolves around his primary, Raise Monolith, which creates a 1-tile wall at the target location and deals damage during Blast Phase. In future turns, Monoliths deal damage around themselves passively. Petrus can also connect them with a chain of energy to damage all enemies in between two Monoliths. Monoliths also serve as permissible locations for his dash, similar to Grey’s Slip Away to Rio. You can only have 3 Monoliths active at once, so good Petrus play will revolve around placing them in key spots to deal damage.

Hello! This is my first Lancer concept posted to my site. I have 4 total in the works (and another 2 starting to take shape), and I’ll be posting them over the coming weeks, every single Tuesday from October 31 to the end of November!

A little background on my design theory and terminology:
1. Typically, fans designing content are instructed not to include numbers, as that will invite balance criticism and detract from the concept. However, as a game designer, I believe that numbers are helpful for grasping the feel of a concept and should be included if the concept designer has a good sense of balance. I think I do, and am happy to discuss the balance as well.
2. Lore and theming are most definitely not set in stone (no pun intended). I have included a little bit of background and an overall theme tying the kit together, but ultimately it is up to Kaivee (et al.) how this fits into the world of Atlas.
3. Terminology: “Ally” refers to a teammate that is not self. “Friendly target / unit” means self or an ally. (I believe Atlas tooltips are not currently consistent about their use of “ally” — for example, Su-Ren’s Spirit Bend targets an “ally” but cannot target self, whereas Dr. Finn’s Bubble targets an “ally” but can target self.)
4. Commentary: I’ll include some commentary about my specific design process on each lancer, things I considered, things I like about the lancer’s design, etc.

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Commentary:

In designing heroes in any game, something I like to keep in mind is the concept of heavy synergy, and specifically forced synergy — that is, having aspects of a kit that rely on other aspects of that same kit to function or even make sense. A couple examples in Atlas Reactor would be Nev (embiggify), Quark (radiate), Oz (made you look) and Grey (slip away). That is, if you stuck Slip Away, for example, on a lancer that wasn’t Grey and didn’t have Rio, you’d say…okay, I dash to a location around my…my what? You get the point. I don’t think forced synergy is inherently a good thing or a bad thing necessarily — for example, to look at two of the recent lancers, Nev has quite a bit whereas Meridian has very little — his abilities all can and do function fairly independently of each other.

In my own design, I try not to have too much forced synergy. I prefer a more organic kit that hangs together simply by virtue of being a good combination of abilities (Lockwood, say) or having abilities / a theme that relate to each other nicely without anything being strictly necessary (I consider Gremo + mines to be a good example). (That is, the abilities have synergy because the lancer is well-designed and not because they literally require a specific combo.) Of course, here I’ve gone and created a concept with about as much forced synergy as you could have. Why?

Well, it’s neat. It’s different. I was intrigued by the concept of creating a wall out of thin air (but different from how Rampart does it) and took that a bit farther to create a sort of chip-style firepower that doesn’t have a lot of big damage bursts but can control the map safely sort of like a Gremo or Grey. When I mentioned the concept to Blatm, he thought the best aspect of the kit was creating the terrain to block attacks, etc. and I started to wonder if maybe it was just too overpowered. Hence my hesitation about just how much of an impasse the terrain should be. (I threw in some notes in my initial write-up below about my making sure it wasn’t permanent so you didn’t get situations where a player got trapped in / griefed.) I also nerfed his dash recently from 5 turn cooldown to 6, to better match that of Grey and Gremo. It’s a strong ability. It also makes the ultimate mod that refreshes it more impactful.

Anyway, the concept sort of speaks for itself beyond what I’ve said, but I’ll add A Few Suggestions for Builds below to give some flavor and let you feel a bit more what it would be like to play this guy. And to answer the obvious question (why was this the first concept you posted?), it was simply the one I had fleshed out in my mind first. I don’t think it’s necessarily my best concept (I have some more exciting ones coming up over the next few weeks — stay tuned as I will be posting one EVERY Tuesday starting with Halloween and going through November!) but it’s perhaps the most out-there, so I think it’s a good one to get the brain juice flowing. Not that you’d take brain juice on this guy. Er, well, you might. No, might, not Might. Argh…I’ll just skip to the abilities and mods.

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Petrus, the Stoneshaper

Lore: Lives in the wastes. Some sort of stone guardian / has a connection to these mysterious monoliths. Zuki would probably call him “Pete.”

Affiliation: Wild Card (None)
Role: Firepower
Hit Points: 120

Primary: Raise Monolith (Prep Phase). Creates a monolith at the target unoccupied square. The monolith blocks projectiles, abilities, vision and movement the turn it is placed, as if it were a wall tile.* During Blast Phase, the monolith deals 20 direct damage to adjacent enemies. The monolith remains in place indefinitely, but no longer has a physical presence after the end of the turn it is placed (i.e. becomes like Rio, no longer blocking any pathing).** You may have up to 3 monoliths placed at any time; placing a 4th monolith will immediately overwrite the oldest monolith. Monoliths are labeled with 1, 2 or 3 dots, 1 being the oldest, so players can tell which will be overwritten. (The player placing it will also see, when hovering over the move and debating placement of a new monolith, graphics suggesting that the oldest monolith will disappear upon such placement.) Each pre-existing monolith deals 10 indirect damage (“passive monolith damage”) to adjacent enemies during Blast Phase (includes an enemy directly under the monolith). (Enemies cannot take damage from more than 1 monolith per turn.)

*Note: This aspect could end up being massively overpowered. I am unsure. If so, it could just create low cover, or have no physical presence.

**Note: There is good reason for this — I do not want players blocking off choke points and potentially trapping enemies forever. Visually, the monolith could lift up into the air, or could become mostly transparent.

Mods:
Weak Force (2 points) (default). Enemies hit by a chain are weakened next turn.
Long Chain (2 points). No range limits on the ability.
Diamonds Are Forever (3 points). The chain lasts an additional turn.
Unearthed (1 point). Enemies hit by a chain are revealed until the end of the next decision phase.

Mods:
Cave (2 points) (default). Gain 15 shields until end of next turn.
Extensive Tunnels (2 points). Increase the possible range for a location (to dash to) around the monolith by 1.
Power It Up! (3 points). Also Empower the monolith this turn.
Parkour (1 point). Gain haste next turn.

Ultimate: Overload (Prep Phase). Costs 100 energy. Place a monolith as you would with your Raise Monolith ability (primary), but the oldest monolith does not disappear until the end of the turn. Any pre-existing Crystal Chains are removed. During Blast Phase, Empower all monoliths (including the one placed) (benefits from whatever mod you are using on Empower) and create Crystal Chains between all monoliths. Crystal Chains created by Overload last only until end of the current turn, but benefit from both Weak Force and Unearthed regardless of what mods you are using. (These Overload chains will have slight graphical differences from the normal ones.) You gain energy as normal from the passive monolith damage and the Crystal Chains.

*Note: I came up with this name before I saw Isadora’s mod called “over-overcharge.” Sorry for the inadvertent similarity.

A Few Suggestions for Builds:

Radiation (3) — Massive (3) — Nothing (0) — Extensive Tunnels (2) — Over-overload (2). This build is designed to deal high amounts of passive damage with Radiation and Massive. The focus is on placing monoliths where they are likely to be disruptive. Extensive Tunnels lets you have more flexibility with your dash, given that you are placing the monoliths aggressively for damage, and Over-overload adds some extra damage as well.

Nothing (0) — Light Rock (2) — Diamonds Are Forever (3) — Cave / Extensive Tunnels (2) — Lightning Rod (3). This is an energy build with Light Rock and Lightning Rod. We take Diamonds Are Forever to try to get as much value from our chains as possible, and Cave, Extensive Tunnels, or even Crush on primary with the remaining two points. The goal, of course, is to get multiple ultimates.

Tetra (3) — Light Rock (2) — Long Chain (2) — Nothing (0) — Lightning Rod (3). Slightly different take on an energy build. Tetra lets us have more explosive ultimates, so we run Light Rock and Lightning Rod for more ultimates and to help offset the energy loss from Tetra. Long Chain gives us more flexibility in connecting our spread-out monoliths (since there’s another one around) with a Crystal Chain.

I think there are some other good mods that didn’t make it into the above builds, for example Grind to a Halt (CC is good!), Parkour (Haste for 1 point!) and Mountain Goat (more dashes!). Maybe you could make a fun kiting build with those mods, too.

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2 thoughts on “Lancer Concept #1 — Petrus”

A really nice idea for a kit. What, but the “wall-ability” on the primary has to be removed, because it will end up taking one person like literally out of the game damage wise. Imagine a Lockwood or Zuki or ANYONE not beeing able to hit anyone… for the whole game… because every turn there is a wall popping up before you.

A possible solution is to make empowerd monolyths massive for the turn, because you could play around that. Would end up buffing the ult, but patience.

In my oppinion the range the chains can be is a little to massive. I mean i understand, that when you ult and everything is connected would be really nice, but you usually end up raising the monolyths more or less close to each other anyway in many situations. The ability to “close of” two escape routs or more with one chain seems alittle to massive. Comparison to nix’s drone, he cant change the angle and cant spawn 4² or 5² drones with ult. Yes i know they can only get hit once, but its probably a sure fire hit on all enemys when placed correctly (atleast i think that). Reducing the range of 12 down to something like 6 or 7 will still cover a whole areal, but allowes some more savezones.

As usual, i wont cover numbers of damage or energy, but i put a warning out to Lightning rod. That sounds a little to good when imagining your ult casting like 4-5 empowers and a sh*tton of chains.

Also forgot to add, that when reducing the chain range, it gives more counterplay to him. Incase the enemys move away from his controlled area, a 12 length chain most probably would still connect with the old “base” and the running enemys, when the extra monolyth is placed correctly.